


At the Edge of the Woods

by Wasuremono



Category: The Yawning Grave - Lord Huron (Song)
Genre: Canon-Typical POV, Gen, Horror, Weird family dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21870475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wasuremono/pseuds/Wasuremono
Summary: A child transgresses. A mother hunts.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 16
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	At the Edge of the Woods

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesertScribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertScribe/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, DesertScribe! I was really intrigued by your speculation about this song, and I hope you enjoy the results.
> 
> "Canon-Typical POV" in the tags is intended to indicate that this uses the same POVs as the song does -- that is to say, the Narrator in first person, referring to a second-person "you." Hopefully that makes sense.

You arrive home robed in blasphemy, my child, as I always knew you would. None of my children who leave the forest and return come back to me unbroken; some return as audacious fools, full of dreams of conquest, and some limp back with their spirits crushed, but none return to me as the innocents they once were. I hoped you would be the first. I, too, am a fool. 

You break the rules fiercely, purposefully. You arrive on horseback, on a creature reeking of fear and exhaustion, and guide it towards the ruined road -- the last remains of the empire I banished from this place, and forbidden ground. As a child in these woods, you would not even look in the road's direction. Now you send your horse thundering down it, and there is another in your saddle, an interloper.

I awaken to the scents of your trespass: the horse first, strongest but most blameless, and then the thin salt-water scent of your passenger's fear. You come last, all metallic adrenaline -- but you were always that way, weren't you? You came to me starving, barely old enough to run, but you were never afraid even then. 

I wish now that you had never come home. I wish now that you were not so brave.

I rouse myself, deep in my chamber, and rebuild myself. The body I create is old bones and shed claws, cave-moss and dead leaves: every rotting thing that is eternal in my sight. I cover myself with old hides and ragged fur. My eyes ignite; I see, now, as well as smell and feel. I am ready for the hunt.

When I burst from my cave into my forest, I can feel you somewhere near the center, in the deep overgrowth. I could leave this body, inhabit the brush and trees, and have you caught in a moment -- but there is no game in that. You always loved the chase, my dear, so a chase I'll give you, this last time. I gallop off on my dozens of legs, crashing and crunching through the snow and brittle underbrush. It is midwinter, what should be the deepest point of my hibernation. Did you think I would sleep through this, my child? I taught you better than that.

By the time I see you, you've cleared the deep center. Your horse is jet-black, frothy and wild-eyed; seated in front of you, clutching the saddle horn, is the trespasser. She is wrapped in heavy furs, but her face is young, thin, and terrified. You are as you have always been: tall and broad, bold, focused. I can taste your relief on the air, your hope. When you were a little girl, I let you win these games of chase; I was a fool to embolden you, I know now. I call out to you, the rattling roar of _I am here and I will catch you._ Your horse startles; you grab the reins to steady it, and only then do you look back to see me. There is no surprise there, no fear.

You spur the horse on, and I follow.

The forbidden road runs straight, and even the trees shy away from it; I can no more trespass on it than my forest can, and I weave and dart to keep you in sight, waiting for you to falter. This body feels heavy, and I realize I am dazed, sleepy -- and hesitant. There can be no joy in this, but the rules and my obligations compel me forward. I push myself faster, leaves and bone slivers shaking loose from my body, and wait for any hint of weakness in you or your mount.

It comes near the edge of the forest, where the cobblestones of the road are their most jagged; the horse hesitates, steps off its path, and I close the distance in a whisper. Before I can pounce, you thrust the reins into the hands of your passenger and leap from the horse, towards me. You land in the fresh snow and pull yourself to a messy crouch, staring me down. "Leave her," you call out. "She has killed no animal of these woods, eaten no plant, broken no branch. She knows nothing. She is an innocent." 

I freeze. You are not wrong; the shivering girl has done nothing, and her terror is heavily scented with confusion and ignorance. By the rules, I have no right to her. She has a grip on the reins now, and the horse has found its footing again. Your innocent leans forward, settling herself in the saddle, and spurs the horse back into motion. I let them go; soon, they are a dark speck in the distance, and then they are gone, well beyond my boundaries. You rise to your feet but stay still, watching me.

At last, my child, I can see you properly. How many seasons has it been? Your face is weathered, and your dark hair is now more grey than black. I take some little comfort in what has stayed the same in you. Your hair is still chopped off roughly at chin-length, as you always did even when you lived wild with me; if it looks neater now, it can surely only be because it was cut with a knife and not a sharp stone. You still wear your talisman of safe passage, though the deer-bone beads are worn and broken. Your hands -- your long-fingered, fidgeting hands -- are the hands of the little girl I found so long ago, and the young woman who left me behind. 

I could ask a thousand things. You have missed so much, and perhaps you have carried your own stories here -- but the rules weigh on me, and we have no time. I whisper into your mind the most pressing of my questions: _why?_

"She needed safe passage to the border," you say. You do not tell me who she was, and I do not ask. If she is to remain innocent of me, I must as well remain innocent of her, and knowing would hardly be a comfort. "This was the fastest way, and the only way to avoid being followed. No others would dare."

_But you dared. And you transgressed._

"There was no other way." You take a step closer, then another; there's a tremble in your face that I remember from your youngest days. You are tired, impossibly tired. It takes all my strength to keep myself from gathering you up and carrying you home to sleep. "Besides," you say, "I'm... I'm ready for this. I knew it would be this way. I just needed to see you again."

_You could have come as a friend, my daughter --_

"And done what? Lived out my weakening years here and let you care for me? I don't intend to die as a child, Mother." You inhale deeply, then exhale one long, steaming breath into the winter air. "Let me feed the forest, Mother, while there's still strength in me."

There's nothing more to say. Perhaps there never was. I take you into my arms and let you lean heavily against me, shivering with your fatigue. I sink my claws into your back, as gently as I can; you gasp, just once, as they find your heart, and then there is no need to be gentle. I tear your body open and let you fall. 

The snow melts around your body as the hungry earth awakens. It drinks your blood greedily, leaving no stain; where your blood touched, green shoots sprout up, soon in sweet sky-blue flower. Birdsong erupts from the trees, heralding the cardinals flocking in, filling the trees nearby with red and brown. They always were your favorites, weren't they? They, and I, watch you sink into the earth until there is no trace of you, only the flowers you have left behind. Your grave is marked by myosotis -- scorpion grass, or forget-me-nots.

My forest blooms with strange flowers like yours. My foundling children always come home to die, whether they know it or not, and every one of them has left their mark behind. The tricksters, betrayers, and fools, I leave to oblivion; the broken ones, I save a thought for when I pass their graves, but I do not linger. You were no fool, and you were unbroken. As my body crumbles and my spirit readies itself to return to sleep, I tell myself to find you again in spring, to mourn and to remember.


End file.
